The Kitchen Shortcut Bible

You might be able to recite those in your sleep. All of these rules are tried-and-true advice for quick cooking, repeated in hundreds of books and on zillions of websites.

They’re not what this book is about. Instead, The Kitchen Shortcut Bible is about making the food you love—but preparing it faster, using common kitchen tools in ways you might not have imagined or working with standard ingredients that are long overdue for an updated approach. The book is also about rethinking recipes in unexpected ways: using the flavor punch of a jar of store-bought caponata for ratatouille, or the convenience of a package of wonton wrappers for crisp cookies, all while eating real food that’s healthy and inexpensive. What’s more, this cookbook is not about absurd gimmicks no one will ever use: making punch bowl ice rings in a Bundt pan or dicing hard-cooked eggs by passing them through a wire-mesh rack. Ever seen the mashed-up edges of that egg afterward? Ever tried to clean the rack? Blech.

In fact, this is a book of recipes, not hacks. Yes, there are plenty of tips and tricks throughout, some a little nerdy, some very cheffy. But it’s important to realize from the get-go that these inspirational flashes and real-world solutions have been made subservient to the recipes themselves. There’s no chapter called “More from Your Wok” or “Small Gadget Hacks.” Rather, the recipes are arranged in chapters about the way they are in most cookbooks: breakfast, snacks, bigger meals, desserts. In the end, we believe that the best shortcuts deliver dishes, condiments, sauces, and the like, not just clever cooking ideas: a flavorful, quick applesauce with a potato ricer, or a complex sauce that magically tastes as if you let it simmer all day just by adding a few tablespoons of peanut butter, or rich and irresistible pudding from your microwave when you need a mug full of instant comfort.

After making a few of these recipes, we hope you’ll adapt the techniques to make even more meals to fit your taste. Take our pasta colander suppers. You’ll put most of the ingredients in a colander and boil the pasta in a saucepan, then pour the pasta and its hot water over those ingredients, blanching or softening them and turning the whole thing into a no-mess, one-pot dinner. The variations you can create from this technique are endless.

But don’t jump out on your own at first. Some of these techniques are unconventional, so follow the recipe until you nail it down—then give it a twist. Such advice sounds schoolmarmish, but it’s a good strategy when you’re reinventing the layer cake (using just a food processor) or even preparing something as simple as bacon and eggs (using a single baking sheet).

Some recipes are one-offs. And some are presented in groups that show the many uses for a single kitchen tool, an unusual technique, or a too-often overlooked ingredient. Some recipes are designed to make weeknight fare (chicken cooked right out of the freezer) and some are admittedly fancier (a better way to roast a whole duck). Throughout, there are small, informal, narrative recipes tucked among the larger ones. All of our recipes show off a little Yankee ingenuity.

All this on-and-on about the recipes brings up a bigger question: What constitutes a shortcut? Well, sure, it should save time, that modern scarcity. If a new way through a classic recipe shaves off a few minutes, it counts—although this book is not just a book about cooking faster. We’ve also created shortcuts that simplify techniques to yield better results. Better without more effort isn’t the usual way quick-cooking books judge their results; but again, quick isn’t the only way to judge the value of a shortcut. If you veer off the crowded main road and take a back road through more beautiful countryside to arrive at the same place at the same time, you’ll probably take that smaller road again and again. And you’ll probably call it a shortcut, as in “that shortcut I take.” Its value is not just in time saved.

In no recipe will you MacGyver a set of pliers or carburetor cleaning wires into a kitchen wand. And you’ll never take apart a blender or break the hinge on a cherry pitter for a recipe. Instead, you’ll use tools as they are, all of them common cooking implements, many the familiar graduation and wedding gift favorites that sit on a shelf year after year.

Much of the work for this book gets done in the Test Kitchen Notes that accompany most of the recipes (or that are found in the introductory material to some recipe sets). There are hundreds of ideas on how to speed things up. Many of these can be applied to recipes far beyond the one at hand.

Admittedly, a few of our shortcuts are whimsical ta-da moments. For example, we figured out how to make fat, chewy udon noodles with a meat grinder. Our technique doesn’t really save you that much time (though it’s much quicker than the traditional Japanese method). But the results are so incredible, we had to include the recipe. The same goes for our way of doing a standing rib roast. And paella. These are not traditional shortcut cooking recipes but rather a sort of new way to think through a tried-and-true dish for better results without additional effort (and in the case of the paella, with far less effort).

But most of our recipes deliver in all the most important categories: time saved, convenience added, and most importantly, flavor enhanced. You’ll use instant potatoes for the fluffiest gnocchi and store-bought pizza dough for quick, delicious dumplings. You’ll make no-cook sauces in advance and freeze them in plastic bags for a slow-cooker weeknight dinner with almost no work. Just add your protein of choice to the cooker and head off to your day!

And there’s much more. Weeknight dinner solutions, all-day entrees finished in minutes, and plain delicious ways to make the dishes you love without standing over a hot stove. Like making individual dinner packets, freezing them, and cooking them straight from the freezer. Or using a slow cooker to turn tuna into the most absurdly delicious Sicilian preserved tuna without much work. Or making risotto in a microwave in mere minutes, without stirring.

So sure, follow the standard shortcut advice: Work with sharp knives, clean as you go, and set out a garbage bowl. But just get cooking. There’s time to be saved. Mostly, there are better meals to be eaten.

A Few Notes on Ingredients

Before you get started, there are a few ingredients used over and over that need a little explanation. All are pretty common; but with simple basics, the specifics matter.

Salt

You’ll need both table salt and kosher salt. Table salt has a slightly milder (some would say “flatter”) flavor, and it’s best in most of these dishes. Kosher salt offers mineral undertones and a nice crunch. It’s used to enhance flavors in some rubs or to garnish certain dishes.

Shredded Coconut

Shredded coconut is available either sweetened or unsweetened. Use whichever the recipe calls for (sometimes both). Unsweetened shredded coconut (often called “desiccated coconut”) can be found in a powdery or a flaked version. Either will work here, although you should crush the flakes in your hands to measure them properly. Sweetened shredded coconut, familiar in (or on) some holiday cookies, is usually available in the baking aisle; unsweetened shredded coconut is most often available in the health-food or organic section (and at almost all health-food stores).

Rice Vinegar

Seasoned rice vinegar has sugar (and sometimes aromatics) in the mix; unseasoned is just that: no sugar (or aromatics, but usually salt). Seasoned rice vinegar is sometimes labeled as such; unseasoned, rarely so. Maddeningly, both are sometimes just labeled “rice vinegar.” The recipes in this book only call for unseasoned rice vinegar, so read the ingredient panel to be sure there’s no sugar in the brand you choose.

Rolled Oats

These steamed-then-flattened oat flakes are the traditional oats used to make oatmeal. Our recipes mostly call for rolled oats. Do not substitute steel-cut or quick-cooking (so-called “instant”) oats unless they are specifically called for.

Parmigiano-Reggiano

That’s the more formal name of the cheese commonly known as “Parmesan.” The name is used here to encourage you to skip the canned stuff, buy a block chipped from a larger wheel, and grate it with a Microplane or the small holes of a box grater. Lightly pack the grated cheese into measuring cups for the right volume amount. As a general rule, 2 ounces of Parmigiano-Reggiano yields 1 cup of lightly packed, finely grated cheese.

Fat-Free Dairy

Throughout, ingredient lines in the recipes indicate whether low-fat or fat-free dairy will work by including those very terms in the ingredient lists. Both 1% and 2% milk count as low-fat. Do not use fat-free dairy (milk, yogurt, cream cheese) if the recipe does not specifically call for it. Many fat-free products (like sour cream) include stabilizers that can react badly over the heat and leave your dish (at best) unappetizing.

One Note About Microwave Ovens

They cook in a broad range of power, based on their wattage, anywhere from 700 watts up to 1250 and beyond. A fairly standard microwave oven in North America cooks at 950 watts. However, it’s best to check the instruction manual for your model to know how your oven cooks when using our recipes. If you have a 1250-watt behemoth, you may want to cook at a slightly lower setting. And you’ll definitely want to carefully watch the food inside.

And Finally…

Throughout this book, you’ll find markers on the recipes to help you decide on the fly which is right for the moment—and which you might want to come back to at another time. Here’s what you’ll see:

FASTER. In general, these recipes shave minutes off the total time a more standard version of this recipe requires. Sometimes, we’ve bent the concept of “faster” to include a quicker prep time with the same cooking time the standard recipe would need.

EASIER. These recipes call for less work. But work itself is a broader notion than just time at the cutting board or the stove. “Easier” might also include fewer pots and pans, fewer tools and knives.

TASTIER. Not all shortcuts are about speed. Sometimes, a shortcut is about getting a better result with the same amount of effort you’d put into a more standard version of that recipe. For example, our recipe for a standing rib roast takes more time than most recipes but the effort is the same for unbelievable results.

VEGETARIAN. We’ve marked these recipes as call-outs to help make your selection easier. There’s currently a raging online debate about whether eggs can be considered part of a vegetarian diet. We’ve gone old-school (in our 50s, we are by definition old-school) and assumed they indeed can be.

GLUTEN-FREE. Recipes with this tag are gluten-free, provided you use a few standard ingredients that have been certified gluten-free. For example, oats are gluten-free in their natural state but are often processed in facilities that also process wheat and therefore can contain trace amounts of its dust. Look for certified gluten-free rolled oats if wheat gluten is indeed a concern. These can be found in most large supermarkets—and certainly in all health-food stores as well as from online purveyors. And the same can be said for soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Neither needs to contain wheat (although many, even most, standard preparations do). There are gluten-free variations of both available in almost all supermarkets and certainly from a wide range of online sources. All that said, even if a recipe is marked “gluten-free,” we’ll go ahead and remind you which of these sorts of ingredients to watch out for, just to make doubly sure we’re on the same page. And one more thing: Although most baking powder sold in the U.S. includes cornstarch or potato starch to absorb ambient moisture, some brands (particularly those from outside the U.S.) may use wheat to get the job done and must (again) be certified gluten-free to make sure you’re creating the recipe to fit your dietary needs.